Whatever the lawyers come up with, it will have little to do with reality and everything to do with what the contemptible homunculi can screw out of everyone in the name of 'justice' i.e. compensation. If they were forced to pursue justice and not money their opinion might be worth than the reek from one of my less satisfying farts. But they are not, and it is not.
What is more important is that it is clearly established in the minds of the travelling public that what these two arseholes did was very much against what every other pilot working in UK airspace would have done.
I don't accept the commercial pressure argument - what they did was enough to get them summarily dismissed from any normal UK airline, and I am sure it was clear to all at Cork at the time.